Location:

CGIS South, S153, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA

Drawing on Odessa Recollected, a new collection of her Odessa articles, the historian Patricia Herlihy will discuss how in many respects Jews adopted Odessa as their city more than did any other inhabitants. Present there only in small numbers at the beginning, Jews came to form one third of Odessa’s population by the 1917 Revolution. While some Greeks and Italians made fortunes in the grain trade, only Jews boasted that one could “live like God in Odessa.” At the same time, pious Jews declared that the fires of hell burned around the city. What were the patterns and...